$100 million apartments aren’t the norm in NYC, but with “vertical mansions” bubbling up all over, it’s only a matter of time. This triplex, which the Wall Street Journal describes as “the city’s most expensive apartment,” is the latest contender.
The three-level penthouse will sit at the crown of a luxury tower on Park Avenue designed by Robert AM Stern. At 51 stories, it’s not the tallest, but it’s likely going to be the priciest: The private terraced triplex is priced at $US10,000 per square foot — more than $US120 million for 12,400 square feet in total. The only interior rendering is pretty rough, but shows a private pool (and creepy scale model):
$100 million sounds hyperbolic, but some of its neighbours are destined to offer similarly priced units.
This is the so-called “Billionaire’s Row,” a long thicket of astronomically expensive towers along West 57th Street (which we’ve written about before ). This is destined to become a neighbourhood of “vertical mansions,” a row of towers that are accessible only to a handful of owners who occupy multiple floors.
The question is whether the bubble — and this is a bubble — will last long enough to see all of them completed, much less sold. According to the Wall Street Journal, brokers are already worried that this glut of oligarch-ready units will never have enough prospective buyers:
Although the number of listings in Manhattan shrank to the lowest levels in at least a decade, there is now about a 31-month supply of apartments and houses priced at more than $US10 million… These don’t include high-priced apartments at new developments that aren’t routinely shown in New York’s main broker listing system.
New York has never had a problem with half-finished skyscrapers, unlike cities including London, Caracas, and Chicago. But with millions of square feet underway along a single street, all priced for a very small demographic of buyers, it’s not out of the question.
After all, construction booms are almost always followed by economic busts. If NYC ends up being immune, it will be the exception to a tried-and-true rule. [Wall Street Journal]